In play By FKR Collective

Issue #2 - Jan 2021

 In play
By FKR Collective
Issue #2 – January 2021

necromancy Writing
Anton Paulissen, Brent Bemis, CosmicOrrery, Derek Bizier, Edmund Denham, Eric Stein,
Franky Stein, Heather Rusk, Horos, Jon Garrad, Justin Hamilton, Kyle Maxwell,
Laurie O'Connel, Matthew K, Nakade, Oz Browning, Robin Harding, Sam M, Suzanna,
Will Calloway

Art & Layout

Edmund Denham, Horos, Jon Garrad, Justin Hamilton, Matthew K, Oz Browning,
Robin Harding, Sam M, Sigve Solvaag, Styno, Will Calloway

As well as many works from the public domain.

Editing & Proof Reading

Anton Paulissen, CosmicOrrery, Harris Miller, Kyle Maxwell, Laurie O’Connel,
Matthew K, Nakade, Oz Browning, Sigve Solvaag, Sam M, tiikerikani

Production & Distribution

Jared Sinclair, Matthew K, Oz Browning, Sigve Solvaag

Cover Art
Mark Conway

https://inplay.itch.io

This zine is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

1
2
 Look, if you’re holding this zine then you probably know where it came from (a
tiny corner of Discord) and you probably know that half of its proceeds go to leftist
causes and the other half to printing the damn thing. You know that dozens of different
people contributed words, images, expertise, advice, support, and revisions. What you
might not know is that we’re just getting started. In the two months I’ve been here, I’ve
seen writers grow, editors sharpen their swords, and designers learn new tricks. That
kind of collective will and energy can only get better.

Issue #2 deals with the dead, the way we raise them and the ways we play them. In
the necro-political spectre of 2020, to think of death otherwise is itself, a radical act.
From tombs to internships, old bones to new souls, each entry herein betrays a simple
dream—that the dead may yet dance with the living. I invite you then, dear reader, to
speak with your own shades and phantoms, to break down those fundamental
categories, so that when the dice land, you can say with conviction, “we’re just getting
started.”

Matthew K.

3
4
 Behold,

God Dies!
OR : “AN ILLUSTRATED ATLAS OF THOSE UPON A FELLED DIVINE”

ETERNITY UNDONE, its host is slain. Where once stars crown’d, Death’s dreary
shroud is lain. And where creation’s spark did caper free, now lay dim globes bereft of
will to see. In time the holy animus dispelled, so left behind a grand and rotting shell.
And though we mourned, lone grief cannot sustain a man deprived and wracked by
hunger pangs.

If men to gods are little more than flies—then let us be! We seize upon our prize!
What follows is a simple registry: Not of gross mass but spry variety of kin who mean
to colonize the dead. So like Sir Worm let’s start then with—

THE HEAD
SEAT OF DIVINITY

The Capitol: On iv’ry thrones they feast upon God’s breath, unceasing still
long after certain death. From unseen bellows, blown past winding stair, and
turns the city’s mills with fetid air.

5
 THE TORSO
MIRACULOUS FUNDAMENT INDEED

The High Plains: Scant yurts do trace the gently shielding hand, protected
from the batt’ring wind and sand. Here zealous few who brave the scouring
sun, and swear they hear a dead heart’s distant thrum.

The Hillock Forts: Where rolling, sturdy ground gave rise to spoil, so grow
some petty lords from others’ toil. Their purses thick but hearts turned slick
with rot, they raise their walls and burn their neighbor’s plot.

The Weeping Mines: What killed our Lord, we’ve not the ken to know, but
‘pon Their flank is marked a killing blow. Deep quarries ply the Wound for
quartered flesh, and each dawn disgorge miners stained afresh.

6
 THE TRUNK
MOST FERTILE BOUNTY

The Thicket: From God’s own loins spring lush and verdant groves, uncharted
still for fear of what might rove along the dark and fecund jungle bed: Some
monstrous progeny birthed from the dead.

The College Digita: On distant, chilly, zephyrs floats the Hand—so spider-
like and sinister a land! From rictal grooves erupts a scholar’s spire, its halls
aroar with lectures’ raucous choir.

The Saphenous Canal: Firm hands dug deep and found a buried vein, no
trifling rill but stately liquid main. While tides have slowed and blood has
set to gel, men still draw barges forth on oozing swells.

7
 THE LEGS
AN ACQUIRED TASTE

The Grand Relief: With teetering walkways and netted masts, a colony of
scribes is clinging fast. They chart the sole and trace each calloused burl, so
sure of hidden meaning in the whorl.

The Fallen Bridges: Some pair of sibling kings once ruled the limbs, though
wasn’t long that filial love did dim. The War of Many Bridges was abrupt, it
ended just the moment lines were cut.

The God’s End: The last! A jutting gesture towards the void—abyss
unleashed, the firmament destroyed. Lone pilgrims venture here either to
find some solipsistic doom or peace of mind.

8

THE DEAD LABOR
A Necropunk City for fantasy games
By Sam M
The Necromantic Nobility of this medieval metropolis have left
behind the cloak & dagger rituals and gone public. After a
backroom deal with the Ancestral Church, cemetery space became
scarce. All dead must now work to rest. This change was originally
met with cries of sacrilege and fears of ancestral retribution, but over
time civic life has grown to accommodate various skeletal conveniences.
However, human labor has in no way been eliminated, for why would
any noble sacrifice efficiency for the comfort of their subjects? Work
has certainly changed, augmented as it is by tireless skeletal hands.
Despite its morbid appearance to new arrivals, the city has acquiesced
to its dead-powered life. Well except for the death-stench and round
the clock bone clacking. No one could get used to that.
The Nature of Undeath
The peculiar nature of undead in this metropolis and the
surrounding countryside lends itself well to the
necromantic economy. Whether these features are true of
all undead is a subject of some academic debate.
• Any physical remains denied or removed from their
proper resting place will immediately awaken.
• Undead can see perfectly at night.
• Undead feel neither tiredness, nor physical pain.
However, they feel a constant, nagging pull to return
the grave, like an energized insomniac hoping to rest.
• Undead retain full awareness and control of all
articulated portions of their skeletal structure,
regardless of physical connection or distance.
• An undead retains this awareness and control until
they are buried, cremated, or otherwise interred in a
manner fitting of the culture they held in life.
• Thus undead can never be killed; they can only be
properly laid to rest.
Undead Living:
Being undead is of course quite different from being alive.
The nature of being undead can vary drastically, either by
the nature of death on different worlds or from one
undead to another. There are myriad possibilities. Unlife is
as varied as living life.
1. Undead may awaken with no memory of their past
life, though with an unconscious knowledge of it.
Perhaps they have a great curiosity for this world
they once lived in, or perhaps they find new
companionship with their boney fellows.
2. Undead awaken with full knowledge of their past
life. Perhaps they wish to keep up with business as
usual, become obsessed with previous mishap, or
begin anew with a weary yet deathless tenacity.
9
Controlling Undead:
If one is to have a profitable venture utilizing undead
labor, one likely requires a means of coercing or
controlling these awakened workers. These methods
depend on the kind of undead one attempts to employ.
1. Unintelligent (Aggressive): If the state of an undead
upon awakening is gnawing at the face or grasping at
the legs, we recommend no method of control, as
this rage can be harnessed for many useful and
violent purposes. Instead merely confine the undead
and unleash them at one’s enemies at a strategic
juncture.
2. Unintelligent (Docile): If an undead is merely docile
upon awakening—they sprint unceasing in a cardinal
direction or merely sleepwalk and moan
incessantly—they can be easily reprogrammed. After
use of a simple spell, a combination of fell
incantations and exaggerated gestures mimicking
their desired task can lock them into any sequence
of rote action.
3. Intelligent (Spell Affected): If an undead awakens
with intelligence, a necromantic ritual may allow
direct control by a living necromancer within a
certain range. In order to prevent lapses of control,
we recommend a contingent of well-compensated
lesser necromancers, confined to towers spaced at
regular intervals. We should note, however, that their
psychic commands can be foiled by the undead
donning a lead death mask or by loud and constant
music.
4. Intelligent (Spell Immune): Undead who retain the
pesky quality of human labor, namely being
unaffected by necromantic mind control, must be
controlled by more coercive means. We recommend
the privatization of grave plots and the sale of
proper burial. Hourglass sand is an ideal currency, as
it lacks value for the living and can be used instead
of fertile grave dirt for interment. Because of
unionization efforts, we have had to replicate this
pay structure for all undead regardless of
controllability.
Street Unlife:
Though constant reminders of one’s mortality makes Corpse Conveniences:
some visitors uneasy, the city has become a hub for Skeletons have full control of all their bones, even across
itinerant undead, exporters of death-powered amenities, vast distances. Thus many opt to split their body across
and dungeon minion recruiters. multiple jobs to pay for their grave plot faster.
1. Noble with animated corpse gown and a retinue of 1. Eave-mounted Skulls shouts out witnessed crimes
skeletal troubadours enroute to a masquerade 2. Elbow joint opens door automatically
2. Ghoul-owned butcher shop push-cart hawking spicy, 3. Candle covered skeleton lights your way at night
gourmet blood-sausage and sliced deli meats 4. Skeletal signpost points towards stated address
3. Heavily armed skeletons, puffing on pipes filled with 5. Bone-legged trolley car trundles across town
grass, looking for work guarding a dungeon 6. Bone leg end table follows with drink
4. Noble teens have chicken-fight jousting-match on 7. Finger bone amulet pokes you at hourly intervals
skeleton’s shoulders, nearly knock over a market stall
8. Skeletal hand takes and counts coins
5. Grub Breeders, maggots fall squirming from their
9. Skeletal arm on table deals cards and arm wrestles
robes, their fly enclosure teeters as they shuffle along
10. Sit on skeleton legs to be born over puddles
6. Sun-God paladin locked in stockade for attempted
re-murder, whispers for jail break
7. Store owner argues with Spectres distributing union
Necromantic Devices
literature on her stoop
This corpse-powered equipment finds many uses in
8. Ten skeletons with scythes and sun hats setting off
adventuring life, though a strict contract requires they be
to the fields
returned for burial once labor time is paid. Violators will
9. Hungover lich-queen scouring taverns and alleyways see their boney tools turn swiftly against them.
for misplaced soul jar 1. Skull: can raspily recite memorized folk songs and a
10. Vampire with parasol window shops for a comfier single long epic.
coffin, his anxious thrall insists they wait ‘til nightfall 2. Skeleton arm book stand: Turns pages, and scribes
Locations and Landmarks notes in margins.
Despite a vibrant economy, the bustling bones and a 3. Skeletal limb: Can replace one injured or lost. Very
history of Necromancy does cast a certain morbid pall restless, kicks or grasps all night.
over the city. 4. Skull worn on head: Watches your step in total
1. Necromancers Tower: Spikey and obsidian, darkness and warns of threats from behind.
surrounded by scaffolds. Skeletons repaint and 5. Skull, torso, and arms worn as harness: Boney arms
renovate to brighten the facade for local rebranding. can use extra tools and weapons.
2. Ancestral Church: Gaudy gargoyles and gold leaf 6. Whole skeleton without skull worn as armor: Helps
generously donated by the nobility. Skeleton ceiling the wearer bend, lift, and fight. Reinforces limbs.
decorations lead hymns and keep chandeliers lit.
3. Farmland: Farmers in sunhats pull pole-mounted
skeleton thresher teams. Stained skeletons are hosed
down after their shift in cranberry bogs.
4. Oral Library: Skeleton-leg library staff scamper
around with attached ladders to fetch skulls from
four-story shelves. Skulls can each recite one book.
5. Graveyard: High iron fences. Gravedigger guards
with shovel-spears march on patrol. Undead count
grains of hourglass sand to buy temporary plots.
6. Secret Cemetery: Whistling undead watchers. Leaf
covered grave mounds. Under cover of night,
skeletons barter for an early and discounted burial.
7. Mausoleum Market: Shouting vendors and bone
chimes. Chalk-scribed gravestones indicate available
wares. Moved mausoleums used as morbid stalls.
8. Bedless House Block: Kept awake by constant
shambling, living families built a bright painted
house block for their awakened ancestors.
10
 By Oz Browning

We slept for an age before they came.

The thieves with their torches and heat, with their

crowbars and poles, with their bright magicks.

Breaking the seals of our places of rest.

Gathering our wealth in their covetous hands.

Cruel laughter echoing through our lifeless sleep.

We were rudely awakened.

Relics that protected us, we are now bound to return.

Cursed to unlife.

If we want peace, we will have to take it.

HOW AM I KNOWN? WHAT AM I NOW? WHAT DO I BEAR?

1 A brilliant mage
2 A canny merchant
3 A charming monarch
4 A chivalrous knight
5 A hard-working serf
6 A virtuous priest
1 A harrowing ghost 1 A battle-worn shield
2 A rattling skeleton 2 A deep-hooded robe
3 A shambling mummy 3 A pouch full of coin
4 A stumbling corpse 4 A semblance of life
5 A trembling ghoul 5 My titles and deeds
6 A whispering wraith 6 The mark of my crimes

WHO WAS I REALLY? WHAT DO I WIELD? WHAT DO I SEEK?

1 A cold-hearted wretch
2 A kind-hearted fool
3 A light-fingered thief
4 A quick-tempered brute
5 A self-obsessed bore
6 A silver-tongued cheat
1 A book of vile spells 1 A cursed artifact
2 A ritual knife 2 A forbidden tome
3 A sturdy old staff 3 A hoard of gold coins
4 An ancestor’s sword 4 A loved one’s remains
5 My rapier-like wit 5 A token of love
6 The word of the damned 6 My body restored

11
THE BONE WARRIOR PEOPLE
By CosmicOrrery
In the desert live the Bone Warrior
People in homes of clay mud brick.
The Bone Warrior People do not
bury their dead. What fool would
trap their kin beneath the ground
to never feel the sun’s warmth
again?
When kin die their bodies are
delicately cleaned and laid bare,
then placed upon a tall wooden
funerary tower where birds will
strip the skeletons clean of meat.
Once the birds have finished with
them, the skeletons are cleaned
once more and given over to the
Etchermen. Who carefully carve
certain symbology unto the bones.
Symbology which shall bind the
departed spirit to the bones as
long as they remain intact.
LESSOTA TWELVE-BLOWS
Her ancestral spirits dance around her in the
form of writhing snakes and have given
her a penchant for sour cactus blossoms
which she often eats.
A cunning tactician but brash, her
ancestors do not whisper to her like
others.
Now most bones are stored in
special pots kept in the familial
shrine, where offerings of cactus
liquor and incense are made.
Not all bones remain here in
perpetuity however. For the
people’s warriors carefully select
bones from their various ancestors
which they piece together to
make their panoplies. These suits
of bone armour tie the collective
spirits of a warrior’s ancestors
together in a melange of souls
who protect, empower, and aid
their descendant.
It is not a one sided relationship,
warriors often indulge in habits
favored by their ancestors and
have even been known to finish
old vendettas.
12
 DRAUGRMANCY By Derek Bizier
Fill your frozen tomb with the Norse
undead.
The Norse believed that any greedy or evil
person could become a draugr. It would
only take an improper burial to make it so.
The bodies of the dead who were not laid
horizontal had the best chance of becoming
undead.
Was the Draugr purposefully trapped and
killed to protect the tomb? Though it was
believed that the most evil and vile people
in life could be made to stalk the tombs of
kings, it is not inconceivable that people
would have volunteered to guard the riches
contained within.
In undeath the Draugr typically becomes
empowered with otherworldly strength
and in many cases they were thought to
have magical powers.
Feel free to add to these lists and come up
with some more fun ways to populate your
tombs. Remember that there should be
plenty of loot for the dead to protect, unless
of course it has already been cleared out by
those who have come before, in which case
there may be even more Draugr.
13
Special powers (D6)
1 One with the earth
This creature can travel through the
ground, but only in the dirt.
2 Glow
The sheer act of existing keeps this
creature’s den alit with an unnatural
eerie light.
3 Diseases
This creature spreads pestilence, turning
those who get too close into Draugr.
4 Giant’s strength
An unnatural predatory strength grants
favor to this creature in combat.
5 Control the weather
There is a reason the tomb is so cold and
foggy. It makes it easier to prey on those
who would rob it of its riches.
6 You shall pass
This Draugr will follow you outside of the
tomb to exact its revenge. Most will not
follow, but this one will not stop until
one of you is dead.
 JDIlKTFZfEX
Descriptions (D6)
1 Sharpened teeth
It is said that the Draugr attacks their
victims and drains the life force from
them to keep up their strength.
2 Bruised, battered and bloated
The Draugr is blue and black with
bruising and it’s poisonous gases from
decomposition have yet to escape.
3 Missing toes
The Dead’s toes were often bound so they
could not walk. The simple solution
would be to remove those toes. The dead
can hardly walk with its feet still bound.
4 Skeletal
The age of this creature is given away by
the lack of flesh that remains.
5 Half frozen
The Draugr has been sitting in the cold
for a long time, it has long since lost its
body warmth and its clothes are stiff
with frost. It would be best not to be
touched by its freezing grasp.
6 Fully armored
The dead is loud when it moves but it will
not go down nearly as fast as its
compatriots.
Backstories (D6)
1 Soldier
One of the Jarl’s personal guards, they
volunteered for this honor.
2 Peasant
Once a peasant who was caught stealing,
now the dead will stop all those who try
to steal from it.
3 Druid
One of the elite masters of the runes, no
bigger insult could be afforded than
guarding a mortal’s tomb in death. They
are enraged by any who come across
their path.
4 Thane
Once a personal attendant to the Jarl,
through the years they earned their place
in this tomb.
5 Murderer
It is rumored that this Draugr was the
one who slew the Jarl, and this is the fate
they reaped with that final act.
6 Fallen soldier
Every tomb needs its grunts. They were
particularly cruel in battle in life and
that holds true in death.
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18
 Immortality (on a budget) by Justin Hamilton

Everyone knows that necromancy is a wealthy person’s game. To be born

in an arcane environment, plus the costs of all the reagents the dark gods
request, paying laborers to shovel up graves, attending auctions for once-
in-an-aeon components is out of the reach of commoners.

Fortunately there are many avenues to achieve the trendy status of

“undead.” One must be willing, however to compromise on trivial aspects,
such as degree of sentience, anthropomorphic sustainability, or the idea
that unlife comes without wracking pain.

d6 Who is offering such a procedure?

1 A cleric looking to pivot into life prolongation as a safety-net after
having accrued much disfavor with the gods
2 A translucent glowing slug whose telepathic vibrations tells you
they bring strange star science
3 An eccentric and overly clingy vampire looking to start a family

4 An extremely crass talking tree growing out of the rot in the witch-
bog
5 Three feuding alchemists wagering whose solution is the least
caustic
6 A lonely flesh-construct who understands “most” of their creator’s
procedure

d6 What are the costs?

1 Candied organs of the innocent
2 The promise to bring in two more into the cult, a grim(mer than
normal) pyramid scheme
3 A saint’s toe bone, exactly like the one in the Baroness’s reliquary
4 Fresh manticore venom, extracted from a living host - potentially
after having been stung
5 Body swap with a rotted, withered warlock
6 Submission to routine experiments and examinations

19
d6 What are the side-effects
1 Not hidden from imps by six feet of earth, you must contend with
demons wrestling control of your body on occasion
2 You still suffer natural decomposition—you will have to fund a
future ritual to stave off decay
3 You routinely spawn large carnivorous corpse-maggots, a painful
event and one dangerous for living companions
4 A demonic overlord has claim to your everlasting soul, using it as
leverage to force you to perform its misdeeds
5 You transform into a dog-sized (1d6)
1. Slug, 2. Worm, 3. Fly, 4. Cricket, 5. Roach, 6. Termite
6 You lose all but the most meager sentience, reduced to a moaning,
drooling cliche

20
 The Downfalls
&
Side Effects
of
Necromancy
By Brent Bemis
Hixis The Rotting, Master Necromancer, to their apprentice:

“I know you are eager to become powerful by amassing an army of

undead at your command however, you have much to learn about the
dangers of the Art of Necromancy, my young apprentice. Heed my
warnings, or you won’t live long enough to attain the power you seek.
Well if you die you will become one of my mindless minions.”

21
Zombie rot - Caused by being in close
contact with undead for prolonged
periods. Your flesh starts to die and
rot, causing undead to perceive you as
one of them. The disease is usually
fatal, after years of being infected. It
does make it easier for fellow
necromancers to raise your corpse
though, so there is that.
Cursed - Perhaps from a spell gone
wrong or from the gods' displeasure,
you are cursed. When you die, you will
not be accepted by the living or the
dead and will be stuck for eternity in
the space between life and death.
Lichdom gone wrong - Fumbled ritual
to become a lich that turns you into a
mindless undead.
Botched spell - Something goes wrong
while casting a spell to raise the dead.
Now, rather than controlling them the
undead are hostile to you.
Dysentery - You are always around
dead rotting corpses....it was bound
to happen!
Bone-dust induced asthma -
Particularly common in those who
prefer skeletons over zombies.
Aura of the dead - After years of
practicing necromancy there is
something off-putting about you that
non-necromancers can’t place or
identify. This leads to everyday tasks
(picking up supplies, etc...) turning
into annoying chores.
Banshee tinnitus - Always wear
hearing protection around Banshees,
or you will hear their wails forever.
Ghost nerves - Repeated and
prolonged contact with ghosts
deadens the nerves, causing
numbness and tingling.
Waking dreams - Sometimes after
interacting with powerful spirits and
ghouls you have vivid visions of their
former life while in a trancelike
state....very unsettling.
22
 Theresa
By Suzanna
Dragons are bad business. They pillage
entire nations, kidnap princesses, deal
out curses, and enact many other evils.
Necromancers are also bad business.
They steal souls, raise the dead as
merciless killers, and strive for the kind of
undeath that requires unspeakable acts
on a regular basis. By logic, a
combination of the both should be
horrible indeed. But if you ask Theresa,
the most horrible things about her are
her missing teeth and backaches.
Physical Description
Theresa is a small dragon, standing not
much higher than a large house. She
shows signs of an advanced age, with
graying, old eyes, whitening scales,
sagging skin, several scars, and broken
horns, as well as yellowish teeth.
23
Backstory
Theresa was born in a bad year, when the
harvest was poor and the game scarce.
Her parents didn’t bother to feed her
anyway. The smallest of her brood, she
stayed small even when the rest matured
to great size, perhaps through
negligence, perhaps simply because she
was reserved for a dark fate.
Eventually, a friendly wizard saved her
from both the wilderness and the
dragon-hunting humans. The two
formed an unlikely friendship. The
wizard taught her spells on the promise
that she abstained from attacking
human settlements. What the dragon
lacked in body, she made up in mind, and
an unlikely friendship prospered.
When the old man died, Theresa began
her studies in necromancy. Only when
she contacted his spirit did she learn of
her folly; he told her that he had found
peace in the thereafter, and asked her to
abstain from the darker aspects of the
necromantic arts; a promise she has
honored to this day.
Her life from then on was successful; she
amassed a hoard by serving as an
necromantic oracle to royalty. She had
some husbands, raised children, and in
general, could not have wished for more.
Now that she is getting close to death,
Theresa has realized that she has some
unfinished business. Nobles with too
many soldiers and too little brain, her
unruly grandchildren forgetting the
lessons she taught them, and some foes
she thought dispatched centuries ago
returning from beyond the grave.
Handing the hoard to her favorites, she
set out on one last adventure to set
straight this bunch of unruly children.
Personality
Theresa is a grandmotherly figure,
having had more contact with humans
than with others of her kind. She tries to
project an aura of warm friendliness,
even when she is in a situation that
would require a decidedly unfriendly
approach.
She is surrounded by a small retinue of
undead servants. She avoids towns and
open places, preferring to visit the few
friends she still has left and do her
business from their estates.
Theresa has made peace with death and
knows that she might not see the end of
her self-appointed mission to “teach the
region some manners”. If her great-
grandniece will not see reason, she won’t
mourn her death that much.
In general, she still prefers to avoid
combat, and teleports away as soon as
she suspects any sort of danger,
preferring to spy on the area and
eliminate assailants when the odds are
firmly in her favor.
Suggested Statistics
Theresa mainly knows non-combat
spells and is rather fragile for a dragon,
owing to her great age and small size.
She avoids combat as much as she can.
She knows most spells and all
necromancy spells that do not harm the
living world, souls or spiritual integrity.
She has varied knowledge about most
topics relating to lore or magic. Her
treasure is small; just enough to pay
whomever she wants to employ right
now.
Story Hooks
Old Bones
Theresa contacts the characters through
a middleman; she wants them to steal
the soul jar of a long-dead lich she once
knew, so she can try to redeem them. To
make things worse, the cult worshiping
said lich knows of the jar, and are
planning to ambush the characters once
they leave the dungeon to steal the
artifact and revive their master.
Family Matters
The old dragon asks the characters to
mediate between her grandson and his
fiance, a haughty and pampered beast.
She claims that he has stolen her
favourite chalice, and Theresa’s
divination has revealed that it is in his
possession. However, Theresa also
knows that her son speaks the truth
when he denies having stolen it. The
characters must find a way to find the
treasure, steal it back, and preferably find
out who stole it and why.
The Merry Dragon of Northham
After her latest confrontation with a
boasting warrior, who mocked her for her
age, Theresa is incensed. Trying to prove
she still has it in her, she wants to
liberate a nearby village from a cruel
baron. What she doesn’t know is that
this is a set up by the baron who desires
to strike fear into the hearts of his
subjects and capture her (nonexistent)
hoard. He has set up ambushes and
alarmed the local knighthood. The
characters must carefully navigate
between wounding their ally’s pride and
letting her walk into a deadly ambush.
24
 THE SPARK
“From a Spark, a fire will flare up”
You’ve heard of necromancers, of
course. Lords and Ladies who
extend the ruthless exploitation of
the people, which ceases to end on
passing away, returning them to
still further labour, binding souls to
unending slavery.
You’ve heard of necromancers in
other places too. Liches—ambitious
individuals who seek immortality
at any cost, looking for any means
to prevent their own life being
snuffed out.
But what could necromancy do in
the hands of the people? Imagine
necromancers who pursue
immortality, not because they fear
death, but because they can’t bear
the thought of leaving their
comrades to fight on alone. Who do
not plan on staying alive for
eternity—just long enough to see a
better world born.
Imagine an army, not of workers
forced into eternal servitude, but of
comrades, reanimated having
given every last breath in their
body for the cause—willing further
to donate blood and bone.
25
By Laurie O’Connel
Imagine necromancy, not built to
strike fear into the hearts of the
oppressed class, but into the
exploiters. This is the goal of the
Spark.
In this world, there is no way out
but to fight. The Spark is just one
of a coalition of groups, organised
in a Party dedicated to overthrowing
the existing order.
The Spark aims to use the very
specific talents of its members to
hold those in power to account for
the thousands of murders for which
they are responsible. It aims to
give justice to these murdered
souls in the most physical sense.
It aims to bring the corpses of our
lost comrades from the earth, to
drag them from their mass graves
and unmarked resting places, to
dredge them from the canals and
rivers where they were dumped by
the mercenary gangs that roam the
streets. It aims to gather the dust
from their crematoriums and
camps. And when it has completed
this task, it will send the army it
has created screaming into the
fortresses of the powerful and
wealthy.
The Spark does not aim to replace the world of the living with the world
of the dead. It is for the living world that the dead will fight.

– Manifesto of the Spark

The revolutionaries fight harder than ever, for they do not seem to fear
death. We despair of ever sending them back to their villages.

– Lord Thorpe, Minister for Defence

SCENARIO: AN ARMY OF THE DEAD

And though you may choke me and shoot me and hang me, your toil is in vain,
No dungeon, no gallows can scare me, nor will I be frightened by pain.
Each time I'll arise from the earth and break through all your weapons of doom,
Until you are finished forever, until you are dust in the tomb.

– Joseph Bovshover, “Revolution.”

Now, thanks to the work of The Spark, the enemy hesitates to execute its
political opponents. The ruling class has turned towards mass
incarceration, throwing anyone with even a hint of dissident links into their
towering prisons and gaols.

And so, as your heroes arrive in this location, wherever it is, in whatever
time it is, the Spark is preparing for its greatest operation yet—an all-out
assault on this world’s Bastille. For this, it will require all the forces it can
muster from the bones of the dead, and the consent and assistance of the
organisations of the living.

D6: WHAT ASSISTANCE DOES THE SPARK REQUIRE?

1. Gather supplies for the necromantic ritual

2. Smuggle the casters into the grounds
3. Negotiate with the other revolutionaries
4. Defend the ritual against interference
5. Rescue a member of the Spark from gaol
6. Open the gates of the Bastille for the dead

26
 The Great Necropolis
CosmicOrrery

Bring your dead and dying, to be ensconced within our ancient halls,

Forever safe and protected, from tomb robbers picks and carrion eaters calls,

And ye who would not lie still in eternity lend us your deadened bones,

For there are uses and purposes to put you to yet...

27
 D E A T H
Countless rows of twisting, winding tombs, mausoleums, niches, and catacombs
make one grand city of the dead, lit by the pale blue-gold light of the apotropaic
lamps that keep the restless dead at bay.

The Ghoul Communes

All the ghouls in the world long somewhere in their hearts to make a pilgrimage to
the Necropolis. There, hidden among the ancient crypts, they dance, make merry,
and consult each other on matters within the Ghoul Parliament.

The Bonewrights

Necromancers of great skill and renown. They work the bones that the dying
bequeath to them into many sorts of artifice, their skeletal servitors just one.
Immensely rich with the wealth that foreigners give them in exchange for their
necromantic mechanisms.

The Keeperfolk

With their apotropaic lamps and long knives they protect and tend the many
tombs and mausoleums of the Necropolis. They are the best guides, besides
perhaps the ghouls (whom they despise), to the Warren.

L O V E
28
 P L A C E
Locales
The Graven Lighthouse
A skinny stone finger upon a pier of
rough-cut granite blocks guides fading
souls to port.
The Grand Wayhouse
Many-tiered and decorated with
carven flowers and skulls painted
bright colors, this is the establishment
of choice for foreigners bringing their
dead and has many special ice rooms
beneath it for the keeping of corpses.
Plaza of Ashes
A deep, smoldering pit has its fires
stoked by soot-stained Keeperfolk.
Those not wishing a tomb are cremated
here and their ashes mingled with
countless others. Prayer flags flutter in
the rising smoke.
The Plague Quarter
Those sick and infectious who have
come to die stay here in an area
cordoned off with low walls, cared for
by Keeperfolk clad in heavy, rosewater-
soaked robes and veils.
29
The Road of Lamps
A way that winds deep into the
Necropolis lined with apotropaic
lamps. Do not stray from the light, for
though the ghouls are a polite and
cheerful lot, they are also dreadfully
hungry.
Shrine of the Empty Lady
Tucked away in a back corner against
the wall of the Plague Quarter, the
shrine holds a statue of a woman styled
as if she was hollowed out from the
front—a minor goddess of those dead
and forgotten.
The Bonewrights Quarter
Neat rowhouses and workshops line
these streets, often mimicking the
designs of the necropolis’s many
mausoleums. Skeletal automata
servants drift from house to house at
work.
Morose Society Lodge
Wealthy foreigners come to learn
necromantic secrets. The Bonewrights
and the Keeperfolk despise and suspect
them. Accusations of grave robbery
and other misdeeds abound.
 B O N E
The Lane of Kings The Warren

Tiers of rock-cut facades, more A labyrinthine twisted place, all made

temples than tombs, rise into the sky
and descend deep into the earth.
Despite their grandeur, the Keeperfolk
tend these with no greater reverence
than any other.
of cracks, and passages, and jumbled
confusions where the tombs mix
together. The ghouls know it well.

The Parliament of All Ghouls

A squat, pillared building gaily

decorated with faded banners and
festive bunting lies upon a rocky
summit’s crest. It is dreadfully dark
within, however, for no apotropaic
lamps are lit within a half mile of it.
S
Here the ghouls meet and hold court.

Encounters
1 A band of jovial ghouls traipsing down the lane, chewing on some kind
of meat. They will invite you to join in their revelries.

2 A funeral procession for a wealthy king. Professional mourners cry

and tear their hair. Servants scatter gold dust along the path.

3 A wealthy Bonewright carried upon a palanquin by skeletal servants,

rushing to negotiate a purchase of elephantine bones.

4 A leper-knight clad in maille and many bandages, openly weeping

upon the streets, ashamed of having failed to die honorably.

5 A party of Keeperfolk, apotropaic lamps in hand, hunting a

graverobber who hides among the mourners and funeral processions.

6 A fervent mage begs for a sympathetic soul to help retrieve their

master’s spellbook from the necropolis.

30
 of the TEN NECROTIC MIRACLES

i. Discourse with the Host Ancestral

The founding principle of necromancy is speech with the
honoured dead, the Ancestors of one’s house and city-state.
Its role is to honour the Ancestors, to discern their will,
and to present the necromancer’s own desire to serve and
their case for intercession.

"We who Know dispute the servility

of the unenlightened: the claim that
the living must spend their days
cringing at the feet of the dead!
What is an Ancestor but memory
and potential preserved for the
benefit of Us: the Descendants?"

ii. Banishment of the Risen

The first duty of the
necromancer is the
dismissal of the risen dead,
who arise into cursed
existence from graves
defiled, tombs plundered,
and sorcery wrought. In all
cases the risen are to be
redeemed by strength of
arms and by the working of
this miracle.

31
 and the PROGRESSION of a SAINT
By Jon Garrad & Robin Harding

iii. Inversion of the Necrotic Principle

What decays can be restored. What rots can be regrown. By an
effort of will and the exertion of Ancestral influence, the
necromancer can reverse the agonies and ailments of the living;
though a balance must be paid, and the processes of decay
accelerated elsewhere.

If death is sacred why prevent the headlong rush toward it?

iv. Exorcism of the Haunt

The second duty of the necromancer is the salvation of the
haunting dead, who are bound bodiless into the world by vows
not fulfilled and wrongdoings not avenged. Where possible the
necromancer should make good on the affairs of the haunting
dead.

v. Sanctuary from the Necrotic Principle

To invoke the intercession of the Host Ancestral is to invite
death into life, to suspend the necrotic principle. This should be
done only in a sanctified space, a liminality created and
confined by the necromancer’s will and faith. Such sanctuaries
attract the risen and confine the haunting dead, and in their
inversion can protect and succour the living.

32
 vi. Intercession from the Host Ancestral
The rites of exorcism and sanctuary, properly wrought, are the
key to direct intercession from the Host Ancestral. By
performing these in conjunction with the rite of discourse, the
necromancer can invoke their Ancestor to direct manifestation.
By pact and custom, the Ancestor lends advice and aid in
return for oblation and obesiance.

vii. Warding and Binding the Dead

What can be confined can be bound; what can be banished
can be warded. The seventh miracle of necromancy is the
miracle of permanence, in which the risen or haunting dead
are barred from entering or leaving a place, or even — in
heresy — bound to an object.

viii. Incarnation of the Host Ancestral

Beyond intercession lies the most sacred communion with the
Host Ancestral, in which the Ancestor is welcomed into the
necromancer’s own living flesh and blood and bone: by these
means are greater miracles wrought, greater feats pursued.
By these means also are the Ancestral blood reawakened and
the Ancestral soul reborn as a Knight Palatine of the Church.

e: tha t to "we lco me the

"W e wh o Kn ow Kn ow thi s to be tru
rsi on for per ver sio n, a
An ces tor int o the fle sh" is a ma lve
w ma ny of the Kn igh ts
mis spe aki ng of per nic iou s tru th. Ho
ny of the Ma tri arc hs
kno w how the y cam e to be? Ho w ma
"
hid e the ir fac es wh en the y are ask ed?

33
 ix. Reanimation: the Forbidden Art
The great heresy of the Grey Pontiff began here, with the
deliberate compulsion of dead souls into dead bodies, the
haunted and the risen dead not released into sacred
transcendence but bound together in service to the living. No
true necromancer of the Church practices these blackest of
arts, these falsest of miracles; they are a theorem, a link in
the chain of life-in-death through which the sacred and true
Resurrection is pursued. That we know how such a thing
might be done is enough.

"The need s of the livin g outw eigh the dem ands of the dead
."

x. Resurrection: the Incarnation of the Reborn

True resurrection, as the final and ultimate expression of
necromancy, is the culmination of all acts of faith thus far
described. By discourse with the departed spirit, by cleansing
through banishment and exorcism, by restoration through
inversion within the sanctuary, and by the intercession of the
Host Ancestral, a soul is invoked and bound once more within
its mortal shell.

"We who Kno w Kno w this also: that the Pont iff achi
eved
his imm orta lity thro ugh the Tent h Mira cle, a
self-
bani shm ent and self- exor cism , and an inve rsion
of
sanc tuar y and a self- inca rnat ion;' that in his glory
he
asce nded to the Host Ance stra l whil e yet livin g,
and
retur ned! He was but the first . Ther e shal l be othe rs.
Deat h
is not the mak ing of a sain t: it is life, unap ologe tic life!
"
34
 The Workers’ Chains
A necromantic phenomenon by Anton Paulissen

First Impressions

Visual - A chain gang, linked by wrought iron chains and manacles, attaching at the
forehead instead of the ankle. At the centre of each head manacle is a copper sigil,
set in quartz. There are ten manacles, with occupants in various stages of decay.

Auditory - A chorus of repetitive activity, conducted in unison. (E.g sorting rocks by

shape, piling slabs, carving mysterious “branding logos” on every available surface.)

Olfactory - Slow, stale rot.

35
Interactions

Recruitment - The chain’s crew collects shiny things for the purpose of attracting
fresh members. Whilst a candidate is distracted by their baubles, an empty manacle
is clamped around their brow. If this fails, they resort to piling in as a mob.

Induction - The manacled experience no thirst or hunger. The sigil’s magic

dispenses with the ceremony of wages and chore of converting money into life’s
necessities. Those enchanted instead draw sustenance directly from abstract
labour. This might be any repetitive activity, often utterly alienated from fulfilling a
practical need.

Physical Effects - The living achieve a deathly pallor after 2-3 days. Promotion to
ghoulish countenance takes a number of weeks; rotting flesh to clean skeleton,
years of progression. Dead bones don’t regenerate; when worn to stumps, the
manacles release them.

Mental Effects - The sigil’s magic quells the will to resist. Those who break its thrall
must overcome their physical bondage swiftly, before the enchantment is
reasserted. The imprisoned remain sentient but increasingly forgetful that things
were ever otherwise.

What’s Really Going On

Incentives - The enslaved are made to believe that carrying out enough labour will
eventually free them. It won’t. They believe their sentence would be shortened by
ensnaring others in an empty manacle. This is fantasy. No work will ever suffice,
because the majority of its benefit is syphoned off by an unknown master - the
Overseer.

The Overseer - possesses a toil battery, which leeches energy from the copper sigils
into its mana store. The overseer shares similarities with the necromancer, in using
the battery to command further undead servants. But no arcane study or personal
sacrifice was required on their part. Instead, they harness the power directly from
the battery (which they did not build and barely grasp the workings of). Their
appearance is typically high society, with no mark of the dark arts.

36
 Kirk Grims By Kyle Maxwell
Many cultures and peoples have tales of spirits that protect them and guard their welfare.
1 The old Clark graveyard sits near the road at New
Sanctum. Legends say that when the Imperial
militia came through on the Burning March a
generation ago, the ground split and specters flew
out and assailed the column. They screamed and
ran from the ghostly claws, and New Sanctum
became the center of the First Resistance.
2 The people of Embron revere their genealogy and
take care in memorizing them over generations.
When ships appeared on the horizon, belching
smoke and flame, the children stood on the shore
and sang out to their grandparents’ grandparents
in the Chorus of Ages. As they did, the waves took
human form and surged towards the invading
navy.
3 In the town of Anabois, dogs are worshipped.
Upon their death, they are buried with great
honor in graves on the outskirts of town and
around the main square. Folk believe that these
dogs guard them in death as they did in life.
Whether due to superstition or something else,
the local bandits steer clear of the town, and so
indeed the town feels safe.
4 Burning Rock Graveyard hosts an eternal flame,
in honor of those who died in the Greed War. Only
the Shadow Assembly know that the flame’s
lighting began a ritual that remains incomplete. If
it should be extinguished while a bell tolls 7
times, the buried bones would knit and rise to
devour the Assembly’s foes. This is their sacred
responsibility, and last resort.
5 Olegario Vélez earned fame as a guerilla fighter 10 The Flynn boy swears up and down that his old
and revolutionary two centuries ago. The town of
his birth maintains a statue in his honor, his
cremated remains buried underneath. Many of
heroic freedom fighters in the region hail from
that town, inspired by his example. But in their
old age, several told of whispered guidance that
led them to victory against tyrants.
37
6 Both sides in the Saints War invoked the names of
their ancestors as justification for their
internecine conflict. So when the armies took the
field outside the capital, perhaps they should
have expected the appearance of mounted
soldiers in the heavens that rode to both generals’
tents. The officers pleaded their case to no avail,
and the ghostly cavalry ran them through. The
remaining leaders quickly declared a cease-fire.
7 The Vogbosi treat few crimes as harshly as they do
grave robbing and desecration, viewing it
tantamount to treason. And no wonder, as more
than once the Vogbosi priests have summoned
hundreds of warriors from their tombs when the
portals from Obith and the Storm Dimension
began to appear.
8 When Mount Flatmark began to rumble and
shake, the farmers prepared to flee. The eruption
caught everyone by surprise, but as lava flowed
towards the villages, townsfolk saw that the
cemeteries remained safe and cool. Priests mutter
and shake their heads in denial, but others agree
that they saw faint figures, arms linked, holding
back the molten rock.
9 My grandmother still weeps on Commemoration
Day, when we remember how the ships filled the
skies and threatened annihilation. But she weeps
tears of happiness, because she remembers how
the gravestones lifted up from the ground and
encased the invaders’ vessels before pulling them
into the oceans.
dog, Justus, rescued him from the slavers and
guided him home. Justus died a year before that
raid, so it must’ve been some other dog - with
exactly the same mottled markings and clipped
ear. But since nobody’s seen Justus since then,
who can say for sure?
38
 The House
of Madame Suma
By CosmicOrrery

A shambling collection of elephantine bones hauling along an ancient

and once venerable hall of sun blanched masonry.

You might encounter it trodding along over the hills and lanes of the
countryside. It tends to avoid towns. But it is invariably drawn towards
places possessing unusual and unique creatures.

Who Answers the Door? What's Filling the Coathall?

1. Melek, the skeletal baboon 1. Cages full of rare bird skeletons,

butler, speaks via a chalk & slate
hung by a chain around its neck.
Very fussy about cleanliness.
2. Tall Amana, a pasty and
cheerful woman in roughshod
work clothes. Spends her time
repairing the house and its
enchantments. Suma’s wife.
3. Torum, a dark skinned,
bespectacled man in black robes
embroidered with roses. Suma’s
husband and secretary, assisting
in her notetaking.
clicking their beaks and silently
beating their featherless wings.
2. Crates full of whale bones
elaborately scrimshawed with
anatomical illustrations of their
former possessors.
3. A mummified baby mammoth
encased in a block of magically
cool ice.
4. Several folded up human
skeletons, spare servants
subordinate to Melek.

4. Madame Suma, a gregarious, 5. Preserved insects smelling of

heavyset woman, bronze of skin,
hair in a tight bun, she is
intensely interested in
naturalism and anatomy and is
head of the household. Always
keeps a selection of cleaning
knives on her person.
formaldehyde, seeming to move
in the corner of your eye.
6. Empty crab shells stacked one
on another neatly and precisely,
each marked with a little tag
dictating where they were found.

39
What Does Madame Suma Seek?
1. Anatomical notes on
transdimensional creatures,
belonging to a dead wizard,
currently stranded somewhere
outside existence.
2. A reanimated marmot of an
extinct species, stolen by a
cunning thief.
3. The stone cast bones of an
ancient lizard being toured by a
theater troupe as a dragon’s
body.
4. An immortal ever-albatross,
currently flying towards the
tropics to nest.
5. A preserved selection of rare
insects, currently awaiting
pickup in a nearby port city.
6. A particular book of natural
philosophy kept in a local
lordling’s private library.
What Gift Are You Given?
1. Directions to a cache of ancient
fossil ivory.
2. A sliver of polished ivory
stamped with a small skull and
crossbones, which grants you
access to the various lodges of
the Morose Society.
3. A tiny animated, taxidermied
mouse that goes where you
direct it. Small objects can be
hidden inside of it.
4. A heavy book bound in metal,
containing notes on the internal
anatomy of various creatures.
Can be used to perform various
surgical operations.
5. A set of small scalpels capable of
cleanly cutting through even the
toughest hide.
6. Fenek, Melek’s twin, an equally
fussy skeletal baboon. Wants to
keep up correspondence with
the household.
40
 Living Hearts, Dead Bodies
d8 Necromantic FACTIONS by franky stein

1 Fallen Farmers
The loss of able hands to death can throw a farming family into
destitution. This organisation fills that need: participants agree to
donate their body if they pass still in their prime. In exchange, families
are given a different raised body to help on the farm. These workers are
notable for their elaborate copper masks.

Complication: The army starts drafting necromancers.

2 Open Mouths, Healing Hearts

Uses "speak with dead" to help families find closure in their worst
moments. Part support group, part teaching practice. At risk of
unwelcome truths and hurtful last words, people are given one more
chance to say goodbye.

Complication: Their teachings have been taken and corrupted to force

the dead to tell secrets they wish untold.

3 Phantom Limbs
Life exacts a toll in effort, blood, and sometimes limbs, especially in
times of war. This group seeks to fit people with prosthetics fashioned
from donated limbs. As they will commonly cite: "regenerating a limb
is hard, teaching an old limb how to work with a new person is much
easier." They do their best to help recipients hide the nature of the
prosthetic as stigma still lingers.

Complication: The magic used to control the limbs has become the
target of an arcane huckster who can control them from afar.

4 Guidance from Beyond

This secretive group of seers shows up whenever times of strife or
uncertainty strike a family or community. Dressed in muddy robes and
ceramic masks, they come bearing the bones of the fallen for the great
wisdom to be drawn from their casting. They interpret the bone
placements and relationships, devising profound pronouncements
based on them. The receiver is not bound to their words, but only a
fool would ignore them.

Complication: Someone secreted a bone into the pile that was not
willingly given. It must be returned to its rightful place for the magic to
41 work again.
 5 Bell ringers
Casting their bells from donated metal, the Bell Ringers create bells to reinforce
the soul. With age, the frequencies of the soul begin to drift and clash, causing
bodies to weaken in turn. By learning the life story of a person, the Bell Ringers
can tune a bell to bring the soul back into harmony. They do this for elders in
the community.

Complication: A tsunami wiped out most crops and members of the Bell
Ringers. They will sell their secrets to Hyrali Gremblibee, a gnomish investor.

6 Power within, justice without

Custodians of the Kintermail Armor, which burns the soul of the wearer and
grants them immense physical and magical power. They roam the world looking
for those desperate few with “just” needs for vengeance. They explain the
power they can offer, as well as the trade-off, and bestow it upon the aggrieved
if they agree to punish those that have hurt them. Once nothing but a husk
remains of the wearer, Power Within, Justice Without retrieves the armor and
finds another to feed it to.

Complication: A wearer reneges on the agreement to seek justice. A team has to

be sent to rescue the armor.

7 Soul weavers
Traveling from prison to prison, the Soul Weavers help to resolve the traumas
that haunt the incarcerated and tend to those whose mental health needs are not
being met. Many communities will treat the mentally unwell as criminals instead
of people in need of help. In addition to traditional therapy, they directly
manipulate the soul of the person. Stretched out like a complicated web,
traumas knot the threads of personality in a person, quieting the harmony of
their soul and preventing them from living how they want.

Complication: A jailer has observed the Soul Weavers too closely, learning
enough to be dangerous. He has turned the prison towards bent compliance but
also made it a reflection of what is inside of him.

8 Loss in words
Pain has a voice in the world and if you listen closely enough, you just might
hear it. Sometimes though, this pain takes on a voice of its own in the form of
a ghost that haunts the world. Loss in Words seeks to find those voices and
listen, mending the ghosts such that they don’t have to hurt the living to get
attention. Ghosts, like pain, fade only with time.

Complication: Sometimes a ghost becomes too much for Loss in Words and
must be dealt with by glittering swords.

42
 Dead Letters
Eric Stein
Everything seems finished when it begins.
If, by citation, I come to inhabit and
animate the words of another, is this
act not an act of necromancy, the
breathing of life into dead letters?
And yet, to privilege this breathing is
to participate in what Jacques Derrida
calls "the debasement of writing, and
its repression outside 'full' speech."
The voice, that metaphysical guarantor
of authority, is precisely that which
declares the letter dead. But, in fact,
writing is the absolute exterior of the
voice, the irreducible supplement of
its beginning, the ineluctable trace
that remains after its passing. Writing
is originary difference, the trick, the
breach that haunts the presence of the
spirit to itself, and which makes
possible this to of presence in the first
place.
The necromancy of citation is thus not
performed by me but by that which I
cite, by that which inhabits my flesh
and animates my voice, by these dead
letters. This reversal of roles is vital if
we are to elaborate a politics of
necromancy, and especially if we are
to begin to play with necromancy. As
Achille Mbembe writes, "the ultimate
expression of sovereignty resides, to a
large degree, in the power and the
capacity to dictate who may live and
who must die." Necromancy is political,
and citation, therefore, is not only
necromantic but necropolitical.
43
Necropower demands that I speak in
my own name, effacing the citations
that give my voice its life,
consolidating them into the function
that is my name, or as Mikhail Bakhtin
says, monologizing them so that I might
come to "coincide with [my] own
individual meaning," thereby reifying
my voice as myself. But to do so is to
"obliterate[my] dialogic relations to
others' words," to obliterate the claim
of those dead letters that animate me,
to claim the power of death for my
own. To do so is to become the
colonist, the slaver, the planter all over
again, to participate in the economy of
death, the institution of "death-worlds,"
upon and through which whiteness,
my whiteness, has been constructed.
Necropower, Mbembe writes,
demands of me the "becoming subject"
whereby my voice as a pure (read:
white) and transcendental origin is
"inscribed in the order of power."
Necromancy, then, set in opposition to
necropower, requires instead my
becoming undead, refiguring the origin
as crypt, my voice as already dead.
Everything seems finished when it begins.
Necromancy articulates what Derrida
describes elsewhere as a sending and a
binding, undeath as the beyond that
"come[s] to overflow the logic of
position," shattering the purity of the
origin that necropower requires. The
double movement of sending and
binding is, therefore, the mobilization
of a whole necromantic postal system
predicated on the undecidable restance
of dead letters, a remaining with that
refuses the monology of necropower in
favour of necromantic plurologies, the
being several of the "I,” the reanimation
of being written.

And so, in the last instance, we arrive

at a necromantic law: I writes us. This
originary citation is a law for both a
play and a politics of a multiple world, a
world desutured from the totalizing
deathworld of white necropower, a
subversive, insurrectionary
necromancy that refuses, above all
else, to be one. This is the reanimation
of being written.

It begins when everything seems finished.

Bibliography
Achille Mbembe, "Necropolitics,"
trans. Libby Meintjes, Public Culture
15, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 11-40.

Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology,

trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
(Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1997 [1967])

Jacques Derrida, The Post Card: From

Socrates to Freud and Beyond, trans. Alan
Bass (Chicago, IL: The University of
Chicago Press, 1987 [1980])

Mikhail Bakhtin, Speech Genres and

Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W.
McGee (Austin, TX: The University of
Texas Press, 1986)

44
 The Morose Society
By CosmicOrrery

Necromancy is not the most well regarded of art,

detested and feared by many.

And it is all these fuckers' fault.

The Society is a clique of wealthy intellectuals

who dabble in the occult and necromantic.

They organize themselves into ‘lodges’, usually

situated in some well off but discrete building
donated by a member.

The lodges vary greatly in disposition and

structure but you are sure to find these elements
in every one.

Above the doorway will be their crest, a skull with

crossbones upon an opened scroll.

A unobtrusive back entrance for the ‘help’ and

other more illicit activities.

Within there will be at least one well stocked

workshop, suited for all manner of necromantic
arts.

Finally, every lodge is sure to have a small locked

cabinet containing the Society’s Articles and a
small cache of the stamped ivory slices that are
their token.

The Society’s members vary likewise, but can be

summarized as all being

a. wealthy,

b. self important,

c. irresponsible.

These characteristics are almost certainly linked.

45
What Is The Local Lodge Up To?
1. Paying for the corpses of holy figures which
they are grinding up and snorting in hopes
that it gives them certain occult powers.

2. Fighting with another lodge over some petty

disagreement...

3. Sponsoring an expedition to some ruins in

search of a particular person’s tomb.

4. Paying you to ‘deal with’ some bothersome

locals who don’t appreciate all their
graverobbing.

5. Making a ‘prophet head’ which requires a

number of corpse ingredients.

6. Awaiting the delayed arrival of a foreign

mummy for one of their ‘unwrapping parties’

7. Creating a skeletal siege elephant to take over

the local city.

8. Paying you to spy on what another lodge is

doing.

46
 Excerpt from: W. Summers, WeHelp CEO | Raising the Cyber-
dead: The Shade economy and our modern society | NextAI
Global Technology Conference 2150

I n the days of our first demonstrations, I was once asked by a frustrated AI researcher how our
assistants worked so well. I told him that, for all his research dollars and government grants, he had
ignored the most well-developed source of human-compatible data in the world. He asked what it was.

I answered, life.

He was incredulous. The programmers of the early 21st century had attempted to produce a
representative sample of the human endeavour, to be certain, but nowadays the amount of data
generated by any human is so voluminous that legacy data sets, controlled and modulated by layers of
pre-sorting and management, form the crux of experimental science. It is no secret that we eat, sleep,
and breathe data. Our speech patterns, sub-vocalisations, and arm gestures are tracked and stored. With
the innovation coming from companies such as ThinkPro, we can anticipate and sort our ideas before
they even arise from our collective subconscious.

Team building exercise Dec, 99’

47
 Yesterday’s heroes, today!

H e was correct in some important ways. There could be no attempt to converge petabytes of data
into a single stream as in the days of old. However, a new and perhaps more exciting possibility had
emerged, one ignored by mainstream research and science—data rights.

Vestigial privacy regulations meant that you were still nominally the owner of your data. Thus, the
owner of a Data Requisition License could request copies of personalised, fine-tuned data from the
license holder—usually themselves—from any database in the orbital system.
This data, while huge, was eminently more manageable, and orders of magnitude more fine-tuned
and specific than a general collection.

A new plan therefore emerged: acquire the data rights of those less privileged for handsome sums
of money—wait until they had, unfortunately, deceased—then collect their lifetime data and use it to
train our assistants. The uniquely focused data means that our assistants often acquire traits of the
deceased, including mannerisms and cerebral abilities. Thus, in a manner of speaking, the assistants
that we sell are copies of the dead, risen from their digital footprint—hence the designation Shades.

There are those who would shudder at being served by Shades. Those who shudder rarely resist
convenience for very long. It is the same with millions of other questions, from animal cruelty to
third-world poverty. As for myself, I believe that we are not offering slaves, but a path to
immortality for those less privileged in life: if a person cannot afford telomere regeneration therapy
in the physical world, why not live on as a digital clone? And, when offered eternal life, is not a little
work an acceptable price to pay?

ease help me
someone pl

48
 The Sovereign
the River& Heather Rusk
Sit, acolyte, and listen. Today begins
your instruction in the rites of the
Revenant Kings.
First, you must understand that the
Order of the Revenant Kings does not
operate in opposition to the temple of
Sovereign Kryk'thyr. None among us
refute that Sovereign Kryk'thyr holds
dominion of the Great River, and
apportions souls according to the
needs of the vessel-body. This would be
madness. No, the foundational
difference between our doctrines and
those of the Priests of the Current are
simply a question of context and scope.
Where the Temple works their magic
by direct petition to Sovereign
Kryk’thyr themself, seeking their
action as a child begs for sweet fruits in
the winter, we prefer to petition them
as students. In absence of direct access
to the great river of souls, we must
make do with what souls we may
capture as they leave the vessel-body
and drift back to the riverside.
Ours is an imperfect science, but we
Revenant Kings embark on this path in
order to gain greater insight and
appreciation for the manipulation of
the Soul Water. You will find as you
trace the footsteps of we who walked
before you that we’ve advanced these
49
sciences significantly in the last twenty
generations, but it would remain the
height of hubris to assert we’ve
approached the Sovereign.
Your second cypher is that, as we do
not yet access the River, we must keep
what scraps of soul water we may find
as they drift homeward. These drops of
the Water will power a great many
works, but there are several
limitations. Know that the higher the
life form, the more difficult it is to
infuse enough soul into it to restore
sense or sapience, and as such it falls to
our most experienced Kings to attempt
reanimation of those lives we
recognize: persons, certain aquatic life,
companion animals, and a certain
selection of avian life. You will achieve
this skill, but you must be patient.
Third, you must understand that any
soul we wish to capture must be
plucked from its journey as soon as
possible after the vessel-body dies. The
longest a Revenant King has been able
to wait before reanimating a vessel-
body was precisely seven days, and to
date no instance of reanimation has
been successful after more time than
that. There are severe costs as well: to
reinfuse a vessel-body with the Water
after so much time leaves a very slim
chance that it will return to life with its
senses intact. The chance is even
slimmer that it will suffer no
psychological turmoil, absence of
morals, or significant infection of
Water that remembers a different life.
It is worth noting that the temple of
Kryk'thyr sidesteps these difficulties
neatly by trusting in the Sovereign
themself to find, purify, and return the
Water to the vessel-body in question.
However, even the Sovereign has
limits. If the Water returns to the river,
nothing and no one can separate a
specific dose of soul water to match the
Water that was lost in the vessel-body’s
death. For this reason, as far as our or
the Temple’s records have indicated,
the seven day limit appears to be
immutable.
As a newly crowned Revenant King,
you will be accused of hubris, of
interference with the River, and all
manner of unsavoury things.
Remember that all Water will return to
the River in time, with or without our
ministration, and so these claims of
interference are patently untrue.
Further, hubris remains in the eye of
the beholden. Where some accuse us of
it, I offer that it seems to be hubris of
the highest order to seek to petition
our god over and over to reinfuse souls
into vessel-bodies… for money.
The final consideration for today shall
be this: the River is said to be
everywhere, which the Temple
interprets quite literally. We hold that
the River infuses us all because
everything that has ever lived, from the
mightiest of beasts to the tiniest of
worms in the dirt, is perfused with
some amount of the River. As such, it is
possible that the River flows between
us all. We suspect that it in fact flows
freely somewhere beyond our
comprehension. This is the best
explanation we’ve found to date to
justify seven days of travel back. We
believe that the River way be “close” to
us in the sense that a god considers it
close. The few times a Revenant King
has had direct contact with the
Sovereign, their wisdom is of such
scope and spread that it takes a King
years, and sometimes decades, to
interpret and approach understanding
of the Sovereign’s designs. Further, this
interpretation is always flawed—how
could it be otherwise, filtered through
we imperfect mortals?—and must be
studied by others after the first
interpretation.
Thus ends the first lesson. Study well,
King, we reconvene tomorrow.
50
 THE BURIED
The dead roam in the medieval village of Kimber. A recent spate of deaths has been
followed by the haunting of an evil presence, a vampire. You have been tasked with
discovering which of the recently deceased is the vampire and carrying out the grisly
task of killing the beast.

This is an RPG story providing a setting, a number of events and possible outcomes.
Read through and play it in whatever way you and your table see fit.

Content Warning. This is an adult game chronicling a difficult situation. Themes may
include murder, prejudice, affairs, death, bereavement and abuse of power. Please be
guided by your table’s tastes and use safety tools where you need.

51
 The people of Kimber knew something wrong when everyone began having
the same nightmare: a fire crackles in the hearth at night; in the shadowed corner
of the room a malign figure sits, patiently waiting for you to speak; but you find you
are too afraid to and instead you tend the fire; the fear grows and with it the waiting,
now become gleeful; you never speak; the fire crackles and burns; the figure leans in
triumphantly, grinning, and in the silent flames you see your screaming face.
Since then there have been reports of strange sounds in the night, mysterious
footprints, and a number of residents are becoming pale and weaker with each dawn.
The villagers fear that one of three people who died recently is rising as a vampire and
feasting on the souls of the living. Let us call these three The Buried. But who are
they?
1. Joan, widow and beggar. Died alone in bed following illness after giving birth in
secret.
Secret. She was involved in a romantic relationship with one of the households and
became pregnant with his child.
Need/Want. To find safety for their child.
2. Benedict, the Deacon. Passed away in his sleep at a curiously young age.
Secret. The priest had been threatening the deacon after he complained to the
bishop about his wanton behaviour with some of the parishioners.
Need/Want. To see the priest punished.
3. Adeleide, domestic servant in the Lord of the Manor's household. Found dead on
the side of the road, apparently having been attacked by a wild animal.
Secret. Was in a passionate relationship with one of the Lord's agents.
Need/Want. To find her lover and be re-united with them for ever.
4. Geoffrey, argumentative villein. Choked on his food while ranting about his
neighbour stealing his sheep.
Secret. Had been slowly moving the boundary markers of his fields.
Need/Want. Revenge on the neighbours who looked down on him.
5. Berek, headsman's eldest son and wastrel. Died while riding, buried very quietly.
Secret. Actually faking their death due to illicit relationship with a villager.
Need/Want. Escape from the village and live their own life as adventurers.

52
 6. Eleanor, the local herbalist and wise woman. Found dead on the crossroads at the
outskirt of the village, hanging from a tree. Suspected as suicide.
Secret. Had performed a rite to return as a vampire; was the child of one.
Need/Want. To drain the energies of the village and become the monster they
accused her of being.

We all know that to kill a vampire you must desecrate its body. Take an iron rod and
drive it through their heart, stuff their moulding mouth with stone and bind their
clawing hands with burial shrouds. A grim task; would you be happy to see this
happen to your father? Your daughter? Your husband? Could you happily mutilate
their body and so end the final hope of all those who toil, resurrection?
Neither will the villagers be happy and you will have but one chance to make one
choice of body to commit this sacrilige upon.
For you will have to make this choice. You will be appointed to intrude into
homes and pick at old grievances and fresh wounds. You will engage with the village in
order to uncover the truth, or what amounts for it in Kimber.

I've heard it said that is a pleasant village; the farming is good, the climate mild and the
lord of the manor is far enough away that he overlooks some indiscretions. At one end
the parish church with its small graveyard sits alongside the river and there are a couple
of other interesting local landmarks:
1. Jenny's Fall, where a fairy queen is supposed to live and animals fear to tread.
2. Wild Wood, a place for lovers and outlaws to hide from the village's prying eyes.
3. The Old Village, where the village used to stand before a flood came. A few
wooden remains peek from the silt.
4. The Giant's Bed, an earth mound looming on the hill above the village.
5. Mirc Road, an ancient stone road that loses itself in the nearby marsh.
6. The Death House, a cave along the river where wolves and beasts
shelter.

It is pleasant, Kimber, I've heard it said, but the folk are strange. Secretive

53
and difficult, finding your way among their truths and untruths, their personalities,
will be no easy task. There are maybe 20 households in the village, of which five are
key households which may have a part to play in our story.

1. The village headsman's. Yeoman Mathew owns his land and rents it out to some
of the landless villeins in the village to earn additional income. His status as Yeoman
marks him as part of the Lord of the Manors retinue, but, thank Christ, he has never
been called upon to do anything. However, he has never shied away from displaying
his relative power, which his son, Berek, laughs publically at.
Household secrets. Yeoman Mathew organises the village's tithe to the lord of the
manor and works with a few others to steal some.
Household personalities. Aggressive, Arrogant, Sceptical.
Household possessions. A pair of spears and an old sword and shield. A good range
of farming tools. A few quality valuables including plates, a glass drinking vessel or
two; some jewellery. A handful of oxen, rented out to plough.
2. The herbalists. Just on the edge of the village is the village healer who uses herbs
and magic to cure and bless the villagers. Increasingly persecuted by the priest,
Eleanor and her daughter, have become secretive. Though people still visit in the
dark of night trading food for healing.
Household secrets. A tradition of witchcraft and demon summoning exists within
the family and they have been attempting to practice it recently.
Household personalities. Bitter, Patient, Proud.
Household possessions. Herbs and other dried and preserved ingredients as well as
the tools to weigh, measure and prepare them. Simple household materials with a
few good quality items traded over the years.
3. William's house. William is a villein but very popular in the village and looked
upon to settle arguments or be a voice of reason and moderation. He is rumoured to
descend from knightly stock and he is often complemented on his bearing.
Household secrets. William is far less popular in his own household, where he takes
out his real inadequacies on wife and children. He knows his neighbour Geoffrey

54
 is playing with the boundaries of his lands and stole Geoffrey's sheep and killed it
out of revenge.
Household personalities. Shamed, Hurt, Envious.
Household possessions. Some old farming equipment and other simple household
materials. A few sheep, fewer than many of his neighbours.
4. The priest's house. The priest has been nestled in the house beside the church as
long as anyone can remember and is used to getting his own way, a believer in fire
and brimstone and not afraid to show it. The deacon Benedict lives there too but
who cares about him.
Household secrets. The priest has more than a few vices that he is not afraid to
indulge in and he will exploit the idiot villagers for his wants. He hates Benedict
for betraying him to the bishop.
Household personalities. Hateful, Bored, Defiant.
Household possessions. Fine household goods, ornaments and relics of the church as
well as fine vestments which the priest likes to wear whenever he can.
5. The widower John's. When you have nowhere left to turn, there is John. Generous
with his time, his little wealth and his house. His granddaughter Adeleide is a
domestic servant at the Lord of the Manor's house, it is rumoured she is being taken
advantage of by one of the members of that household.
Household secrets. He is the father of Joan's baby.
Household personalities. Steadfast, Cynical, Passionate.
Household possessions. Simple household goods with a scattering of fine wares and
clothes, rarely worn or used. A supply of silver and gold hidden beneath the
ground in the house.

It seems on the surface a simple set of folk, but I am sure in your journey
you may yet uncover further darknesses between these people. But you,
who are you? I see you clearly in this firelight, though you do not turn
towards me. Look into the fire and what do you see? A member of one
these households? A child perhaps, or wife? Are you one of the buried who
is not yet dead? Or are your from another household. I will let you decide

55
what face the flames lick around, perhaps as you pass through this journey you will
gain the ability to speak, you will learn your name and your identity, no longer simply a
blank vessel for a foreign spirit to possess.
So we have our pieces arrayed; dawn is over the village, the dew is silver like tears
on a sleeve. A cry of hurt begins as a gentle breeze and becomes a storm. A girl is dead
in front of you, pale and blue and drained of life. Her parents may never truly be
happy again, and you find yourself with the responsibility to hunt the vampire that has
torn the thread of this family's story.
I will leave you here, perhaps to meet again at the end, with a number of events
that may come to you through this story. Choose two or three before you reach the
climax of the un-burial, where a grave will be cut open and the corpse revealed in its
revelatory form.

1. An all night vigil is held to catch the vampire as it crawls from the earth.
Complication. One of the watchers disappears during the vigil.
Possible attitudes. Bitter, Curious, Disgusted
Potential outcomes. The fled watcher is discovered escaping with Berek, their
relationship uncovered; the watcher and Berek escape from the village and make
off on their own adventure.
2. The herbalist is banished from the village and threatened with death by the
priest and the headsman. People are banned from visiting.
Complication. A character becomes very sick and needs medical aid, but is spotted
meeting Eleanor's daughter.
Possible charcater attitudes. Stoic, Frightened, Devious
Potential outcomes. Eleanor's daughter is punished or worse; the character dies;
Eleanor is protected and reveals her fears about her mother.
3. William's house is burned down in a revenge attack.
Complication. The village splits in a fight between supporters of Geoffrey's family
and the neighbour's.

56
 Potential outcomes. William takes his own revenge on Geoffrey's family in kind;
Geoffrey's family are arrested and banished for the crime.
Possible character attitudes. Furious, Disdainful, Shocked
4. The priest declares that immorality summons the vampire and calls on people
to reveal the sins of their neighbours publically.
Complication. Suspicion is thrown on multiple households.
Potential outcomes. The priest's own transgressions are revealed and suspicions fall
on his role in Benedict's death; Infighting among the villagers leads to violence
and the investigation falters.
Possible character attitudes. Indifferent, Gloating, Vengeful
5. Joan's baby grows an extra arm and people believe she slept with the vampire.
Complication. The widower John declares he will no longer care for the babe and
abandons it.
Potential outcomes. John's relationship with Joan is revealed and he is condemned
as the vampire or driven from the village; the baby is taken from the village, or
worse; a new home is found for the baby once it is cleared.
Possible character attitudes. Frightened, Humble, Hateful
6. An agent arrives to investigate sent by the lord of the manor.
Complication. The agent is under threat by those who think he knew Adeleide
and those who are avoiding paying the tithe.
Potential outcomes. The village is accused of not paying the tithe (tax avoidance)
and key people are placed under arrest leading to disruption of the investigation;
the villagers accuse the agent of killing Adeleide or get rid of him in other ways.
Possible character attitudes. Helpful, Plotting, Distant

57
Upon opening the grave we find:

The Vampire has a well preserved body, pale eyes, splinters and mud in mouth and
nails, as it climbs out of the earth at night. Perhaps it will awaken as you stand above
it, and fix its eyes upon your soul, flexing unholy muscles.
Joan, buried with a number of keepsakes of her friends and family. Clutched in one
hand is a lock of her lover's hair, in the other the dried remains of the babe's
umbilical cord.
Benedict, buried in simple robes. Hands clasped above his heart have had their golden
rings removed. His skin is darkened and poisonous looking.
Adeleide, her body is curled up in a foetal position, with a few nice belongings buried
with her. Though decomposed a small section of bite marks look suspisciously
human.
Geoffrey, hands are clenched and a look of anger still is on his rotting face. A
boundary post looks to have been unceremoniously chucked in with the body.
Berek, is not in the grave; wrapped in the shroud is a large sheep.
Eleanor, has whole eyes which burn in the gloom, a shifting of darkness; she is telling
you this tale.

58